Everybody for coming tonight for chris and the bookshelf for hosting. Yeah, i im really excited to be here and the book just came out a few days ago. There is just an article in the New York Times today about investors buying up properties. So its something that kind of drew me in for the last several years, and i just kind of followed that thread from an original study about Short Term Rentals. And im excited carol smith is here tonight, so im im thinking that the event will kind of go like this for the first half. Well kind of talk about what we saw, what i saw in my research, talk about the book, and she can talk about her organization renting partnerships and her role. And then we can talk back and forth and then well open it up to questions. So yeah, do you do you want introduce yourself. Hello, my name is carol smith and i am with an Organization Called renting partnership. Its and we have a unique Property Management style that allows renters to earn equity. Yeah. Yeah. So ive been asked to talk a little bit about what made me want to write the book. I started i started writing this as a masters thesis for well, while i was in school at Northern Arizona in flagstaff. And i was studying the impact of Short Term Rentals. The first line in the book is this book was born from a sign in a strangers yard, and thats from a vacation that i took with friends to new orleans in 2017. So we traveled down there and we thought wed stay in a short term rental, an airbnb, because that be more home like we could be on a block and we wouldnt have to spend as much on groceries for food going out. But on that block there was a sign that said neighbor is not airbnb. And that kind of stuck with me. That theme of how it how airbnb is impacted neighbors. And then when i moved to flagstaff, i saw this trend. I saw a similar sign that said homes, hotels, and so with that i was taken in and i decided thats what im going to study for my thesis. But that was 2019. I was pitching that at the beginning of the winter, 2020. And id then covid shut everything down. The Housing Market exploded and i realized that this was a much bigger topic. And so i followed that thread looking at second homes, looking at the growth of investor owned properties, a lot of private equity firms really getting into the mix and. Just the general growth in that the rapid rise in homes appreciating and so i realized that a lot of government officials kind of spoke out of both sides of their mouth. They would say, see, the economy is doing great. Look at housing prices. If live in a house, youre a appreciating that value going up and up when you retire. Someday and want to move away. But you also need somewhere to live and if thats whats happening all over the people who are really benefiting, where the people who dont live in a who were just using that as a commodity, as an investment price. So thats thats a lot of what the book is focused on. And so thats why housing is on affordable and it relates to. Exclusionary zoning. It relates to a lot of government policy. And then the second half of the subtitle is and how we can change it and i think that was important to me in studying it. And thats why i wanted to talk with local housing organizers as i travel and yeah, i think carol your model that randi partnerships is really interesting. I wonder if you could kind of dig into it to explain where it came from, where it came from was my partner, who is Marjorie Spear . Me. It was her concept. She told me about it back. 1997 and look and we got together and we start working toward doing a project and trying to get a development that we could work with, a partner with to develop this type of housing for the first time. And. In 1999, we had a discussion, the franciscan friars who had property in overtherhine and they wanted they had a i had a couple of blocks of it. And they had an apartment complex on that on their property. And they said that they would allow us to demonstrate great use their property in order to demonstrate and prove my theory. And so we initially did the first 25 units with with the friars margies concerns basically is that you have participatory management with the residents and they can earn equity. What what we use to determine that equity was the vacancy rate that is in that you build into the budget for for turnovers when people move out. So there were four commitments that they each individual had to make. They had to make a commitment to pay their rent on time. Because when you start chasing people for their money, thats, thats more money you have to spend that they are doing the same task. And that assigned task is somewhat janitorial. So they took care of the janitor type situation and then the other was that they at a ten the monthly meetings and then the kicker is they stay five years if they stay you see with the average person moving every two and two and a half to three years, we would have their money put aside for them to be able to earn that equity. And we did prove our theory. We had a study done after we had did it for ten years and they this study said, yes, it was the process was correct. And it did what it said it was going to do, but it added Something Else. It added Community People built Community Together because they Work Together to maintain the property they met every month to learn up to discuss what they needed to do there. Twice a year we would have clean up days and everybody would take turns. And the interesting thing is, is that when we first started, because marty is the gardener and was the inside person in when we got to your tent, everybody was outside nobody was inside anymore. I mean, it just changed peoples lives so much, not only in terms of the economics, but also in the way that they looked and looked at and viewed things and did things. So it was it proved itself to be successful. We had a board who wanted to take it a different direction. So we margie and i left and we started renting partnerships and we didnt have this big 25 unit complex, but we started with a two family and that seems to be going over pretty, pretty good in terms of of having residents because then it is really like their home. We had two middle age women in one and we have two young women in another and were working on another right now that would have a single middle aged person in a lady who has five children. The program really the program really does a lot for people. Not only are there building equity in and money being put in a reserve for them, they are learning because at our monthly meetings we talk budget, we talk maintenance problems, we talk about where theyre growing and going. So there is a lot of Community Building and education along with the participatory management because most of the individuals have not had budgeting courses. They have not ever had to plan a fire or pull a weed. So its its a growth situation as well. Is an earnings situation. Then we found out that it really benefits people are they do things that most people dont arent already do one mother she where her money she took and she sent her daughter off to college she was able to fix up her dorm room and everything and i had another lady had asthma. And when in the summer months she couldnt work. So she paid her rent during the summer months. Had another lady who it was the mother and her two sons. And each one of them had an apartment and one of them lost his job and he took his money and moved to california. So that he could start over in a different career. Another young lady had she was a paralegal, and her eyesight began to fail her and she used that money as copay to have eye surgery done on her half own eyes and then we have four people to actually take this when they in five years was up and bought a house. So it comes to the money that they earn and put aside has come has given them the ability to be financially stable no more so than if they were in a normal renting situation. So weve were working the in one of the things that we do is that we try to maintain the housing affordable bill and how we do that is that we dont raise the rent unless there is a major repair or something that needs to be done where we have to raise the rent. So its not a thing where were raising it each month or each year at 3 so that we can have this profit margin. We dont were not looking for a profit margin. Were looking for people to be stable and to know that they got a place to live and live comfortably. Yeah, it really struck me hearing hearing that story about its just a radical, radically different way of seeing things. Im trying to train myself to think about the word radical differently because i think thats a perfectly sane way of doing things. And i think way that we treat housing right now is a really radical view that housing is not a right, that people that is a commodity that should. Put on the market to whoever can pay the most. I think thats a really radical departure from most of human history. Honestly honestly. But yeah, have you seen that your your model have other neighbor or other property kind of look to it and been like i wouldnt think that would work or then, then taken in with it. But yeah, weve, weve had from all over the country wanting to talk about it and replicate it. We made some adjustments because what we did before we had, we didnt have a land trust. So with the other properties now were, they are part of a land which will always that Affordable Housing. So that presents the longer it did we didnt that we did not have a nationally but we have had inquiries weve been invited to other cities and stuff to talk with them. And as theyre looking for redevelopment activity to be able to provide Affordable Housing. Yeah. And maintain it right. Yeah. I think thats great. Yeah. Its kind of, its one of the things that. I really kept coming back to in the book is that sign of homes versus hotels kind of became i got an underlying way of viewing, viewing, housing our whole economy in a way where its being seen in one of two ways housing and education and health care and retirement. Its being seen as, on one hand, a way to turn a profit, a way to maximize gains and. On the other hand, something to bolster community, to be more stable, to be connected to other people, to build a life. And i think thats that yeah, thats kind of at the core of the book. The middle section. I really delve deep into that because it was the history of a history of housing. And so the way things are today, to understand that you have to dig back into the history where we came from. Can you talk a little bit about the history of housing here, history of attempts to build on affordable, more Affordable Housing, especially in the racial lens in cincinnati . That was something that i didnt focus on cincinnati in the book so much, but that thats just at the core of housing and how its been used to drive a wedge between races, really dating back to before the us was even founded. And the period of colonies ation. Well, yes you know you go back thank you. I can, i can go back is four is the seventies when the government came with money for what they would call modeled and doing time they in terms of African American they some of you may have heard of Community Action which is a large nonprofit that deals with low income and at that time we also got legal aid because at that time, landlords, people were just sitting people out without going to court and what have you. So they created legal in order for them to begin to represent people who were being abused by owners and property. So in seventies the federal government start funding these projects and thats when it was in call section eight, but it was called to, to anyone d three. That was the law that they that they did so with that in mind there was a law out of of of developed of a multifamily. And in cincinnati, the African American communities have always basically followed the , the Jewish Community of the upper west end and dayton and bank street and what have you was, a Jewish Community and then they moved from downtown to avanti l from abbeydale to bond, heel from pond hill, the rule of life. So weve always followed basically their communities in their housing and we took over in then they had a lot of apartment complex is in avondale and thats where a lot the housing the rental housing was put in and deal however during another transition of when they. In 1975 that in the nineties look when they brought in the expressway interstate 75 that broke up the African American community and then west when we start moving to other neighborhoods as well so theres been a progression in now bit to 21 3d3 and to 2023 dc they are moved to the wayside so what they have now is that the feds have a program this called tax credit final c and big business is by our fund get tax breaks basically fee for investing in low developing low Income Housing and thats where we are now but affordable bility does not always reach the income that the people who really need the housing are you you can make 0. 50 more an hour and wont be able to you know didnt bring a whole lot but it takes you out of the market for being able to have subsidized rent so are a lot of issues have built on this and now were with tax credits and our government which has funding for housing as well through the Block Grant Program that the feds have and they do not they not they do not have the process this is in the policies set where the nonprofit who were being successful 20 years ago can not can be successful because theyre getting that number of units as opposed to the qual ity and what really needs to happen in terms of having Affordable Housing for for a particular group of people. Yeah, yeah. Okay, go ahead. So i just yeah, i mean, one of the thing is, is that we need to we need to look at our policies because we get there. Is there are theres a need for other type of housing. And when we went in the non were really being active because it was before tax and the Actual Community each community or neighborhood just about had a what they call a Community Development corporation and that Community Development corporation took care of the economics and housing it in bit in their own neighborhood and that funding is no longer available as it used to be. So got that middle person whos not looking for a profit per say but to provide service in housing for different individuals and that theyre not the concern when the money is being spread because theyre not they dont have the numbers they may have a small. Ten units whereas the the the bigger corporations though that need the tax credit they can 50 units at a time and it makes a big difference. Yeah that one of the things that really struck me in studying it is that housing is so local and the politics are local, and people are care about it and it hits home on a very personal level. But then the themes are so interconnected and national in scope and so that what whats going on in cincinnati not the same as kansas city and its not the same as northwest montana. Its not the same as new york. But theyre all interconnected and you see a lot of that both at the when it comes to the problems and when it comes to the solutions. I think we need to see them as interconnected. You yeah. Have you have you noticed. Good efforts for. Tenants uniting around issues or people really sparking change by coming together on housing issues . Not really. Not a whole lot because of the the financing of of how you do housing and how you develop. I havent seen a lot of that. And thats why i started to begin to look at where where we need shoring up on which is like. Money that that is not just tax credits that there should be some other additional funding for housing theres that little bit more not as profitable and in most of the cdc Development Corporations are are more Service Oriented in their development of housing opposed to profit. Mm. And now that theyre not involved like they used to be, then you dont have as much growth in housing that is more affordable. And then you have right now, i mean, you have the Port Authority is taking up two housing developer hours by default. They had a one incident was real and i think the other one was in west western here somewhere in that area. And they had. 127 one owner and he went into default and. These are rental houses, not apartment complex. These are actually housing in another 147 with a with another developer that went foreclosed on. So when you have situation like that where one individual owns a hundred and some odd houses, look how many people hes affected and what happens to these people when he defaults and the Port Authority stepped in a step is trying to step in and be the savior for those houses okay. Yeah its a its a a very rickety yeah. Rickety boat. Were all absolutely absolutely yeah and very tricky. Um, i wanted to give you a chance to say anything more broadly that you might want to and then kind of open it up to questions from people i, i dont have anything. Okay, thats fine. Yeah. But i mean, you know, it come out in the wash. Yeah. Oh yeah. I that anybody has questions on renting partnerships or, or specific aspects of what weve talked about or in the book. Uh, i just dont open it up to you on. Id like to ask a question about what were just talking about those two owners that had those many homes. Were they just out of curiosity, do you know if they were local owners or were out . I think they were out of town. Do you find that thats a become a bigger problem here, not just in cincinnati, but across the country with these out of may have they really dont have any agency in terms of the city or the community. So but theyre coming in and theyre buying up all of these homes to rent. And then they just seem to disappear. Thats and its not just. National is international, right . Its not just national. Its international is what youre who owns the properties i mean, we are i know that in certain communities there are not people that